As hospital visits are not so safe during this situation, healthcare mobile apps could help patients avoid unwanted visits to the hospitals, thereby avoiding unwanted gatherings in the hospital. This makes healthcare mobile app development an important requirement. It makes things easy and secure for both the patients and healthcare providers. App store revenue growth remains strong in spite of the impact made by COVID-19.
According to appdevelopermagazine.com, the revised 2020-2024 market forecast published by the App Intelligence firm Sensor Tower states that consumer spending on mobile apps worldwide is estimated to reach $171 billion by the year 2024, whereas it stood at $85 billion in 2019. Also,
for the first time, the revenue from non-game apps is expected to exceed that of game apps by the year 2024.
by 2024, the downloads will be at 183.7 billion, which is 9% up from the forecast that was published before the emergence and spread of COVID-19, which initially contributed to 7 billion fewer installs.
The use of travel apps and hospitality apps decreased; despite that, according to App Annie, when compared to 2019, people spent 20% more time using apps during the first quarter of 2020. At that time, consumers spent $23 billion in app stores, that was the maximum amount spent per quarter to date. During COVID-19, the winners are the apps in industries like remote work/communication, social media, education, and online shopping. During the outbreak, the daily active users and downloads increased phenomenally in North America, Europe and Middle East, resulting in a 110% increase in customer spending on these apps.
In North America, video chat and conference apps witnessed a 627% increase in downloads and a rise in daily active users by 121%. So, it means that the need of communication apps is critical.
The usage of some apps could decrease after the current lockdown but other industries may continue to stay after the pandemic. The following are the primary trends that influence the mobile app industry today.
Chatbots: Due to the lockdown situation, service providers have adopted digital ways to interact with their customers. Services like banking, healthcare, online shopping and food delivery work by incorporating chatbots into their apps. Chatbots make it easier for consumers to get the answers for their repeated queries without contacting customer support. 62% of consumers are interested in interacting with the chatbots and there is also the potential to save $8 billion for companies, and so chatbots are likely to increase in popularity and remain so for a long time to come.
Artificial Intelligence: AI is another technological advancement, when used with blockchain, IoT, and Cloud computing it will lead to a digital evolution. The integration of AI enhances the user experience for services like healthcare, banking, and many others. Currently, it is one of the prime tools being used for analysis and research. It provides personalized experiences with enhanced security, and more by way of mobile apps. According to a recent study, AI-powered bots are used by many companies to replace call center employees and are using some temporary workers to fill in their positions. Experts say that the impact of AI will be significant in the technological landscape and also in other fields. As it saves a lot of money and time, it may continue to stay popular in the future.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality: To meet the day-to-day needs, many people have turned to online shopping. The availability of 5G network provides a fast internet connection, decreases loading time, improves image quality that enhances the experience of AR/VR. This enables mobile app developers to integrate AR/VR mobile apps and provide users the best experience. For retail shopping, these apps provide a 3D virtual environment for the best experience. Healthcare apps can use this technology to provide medical diagnosis, treatment and therapy. This helps medical-professionals to conduct follow-up with their patients.
This technology provides benefits in many fields such as education, automotive industry, real estate, furniture apps, finance, etc. With the help of AR/VR integrated apps, customers can enjoy virtual shopping experience without stepping into crowded shops. This shows that there will be an exponential rise in demand of AR and VR technology.
Health: According to appdevelopermagazine.com, online consultation apps like Push Doctor, has witnessed at least 70% increase in consultations whereas the e-telehealth application Well, has observed a 400% rise in downloads. Medical apps are seeing growth not only in online video consultation but also in a large number of smartphone gadgets such as those that can monitor the patient’s heart rate, sleeping habits, body temperature, body weight, and so on. There are so many healthcare apps available in the market to provide benefits to in health industry such as support to doctors and medical staffs, reduce the risk of wrong diagnosis and reduction in medical bill and expenses.
Beacons: This is a mobile app technology that is useful in location tracking and proximity marketing. This technology has found excellent use in the healthcare industry, museums, hotels, and other sectors. It provides a personalized experience for the user based on their location. For instance, the technology can be utilized by hospitality apps to allow secure check-ins and check-outs and also enables to access information on amenities, vacancies and more. During an emergency, Beacons can also be used to track patients or doctors and provide reliable directions.
Education: The technology and mobile apps have made it possible for individuals to continue learning online in spite of the lockdown, which means that the demand for education apps has increased at this time. In the future, students will start learning using the apps that are assisted with AI. Tests also can be conducted online. Downloadable educational apps like language learning apps have also witnessed a surge in the number of downloads.
At this time ravaged by COVID-19, it is very challenging for patients to meet their doctors. This has led to the growth of healthcare mobile app development, and reliable apps have become a relief for patients as well as healthcare providers. Users enjoy the experience they receive by avoiding unwanted travel expenses, waiting etc. Every operation that needs your actual presence can be done remotely. Digitization makes things easier, faster and comfortable and post COVID-19, you will see a lot more businesses with a mobile app of their own.
Healthcare mobile apps help doctors access the healthcare data of their patients and communicate with them without compromising data security. Healthcare mobile app development companies develop mobile apps by applying digital technologies that help healthcare professionals to provide good and timely care for their patients. With reliable apps, providers can make rapid decisions with a reduced error rate. They also enable physicians to give suitable medications in a timely manner. This improves the overall experience of patients and enhances patient satisfaction.
Here are some top healthcare mobile apps that are used in healthcare.
Visual DX: It is one of the best healthcare apps of 2020.The app is available for desktop, tablets, and smartphone apps for Android and iOS. Here you can go for image verification by accessing the largest database of medical images of different kinds of diseases. The app has a stock of more than 35,000 images of patients of different ages, skin types, and other diagnostics categories. Available categories include hair, eyes, mouth, nails and so on. It also includes medical categories such as dermatology, pathology, radiology, ophthalmology, infectious disease, and emergency medicine. The app is used by medical professionals, and it claims to have increased diagnostics accuracy by 120%.
ClotMD: This app connects patients that need anticoagulation medication with their healthcare providers. It works on any computer or mobile device and provides real-time communication between patients and providers.
Other features of the app are:
Manage INR levels
Testing Schedules
Dosing Calculations
Built-in diet library
Track the results of your patients and share the history with any physician
Real-time alerts are offered regarding the test schedule and other appointments
Doximity: It helps users access the largest medical professional network that consists of more than 70% of physicians as members. Doximity was developed by the same team that built the medical app Epocrates. You can search for physicians with the help of filters such as location, hospital affiliation, clinical interests, language, etc. Some key features are:
It provides access to the largest directory of medical professionals
Users can send their HIPAA-compliant faxes from anywhere
Can annotate your healthcare documents directly in the app
ACT.md: It consists of several tools that help healthcare providers to access the complete information regarding a patient’s requirements and manage them suitably. By understanding each patient’s needs, healthcare professionals can serve them with different parameters and work simultaneously with other medical experts across the healthcare sector.
Some key features are:
It has personalized healthcare plans
Health tasks and custom reminders
Contains contact information of healthcare team
HIPAA-compliant message transmission among the healthcare team members
Medici: Medici is a mobile healthcare app that lets patients call, text, and even video chat with their doctor and other healthcare specialists right from their smartphone. This app helps patients talk with their doctor without making an appointment; the advantages are, it reduces additional cost and helps avoid the discomfort of going to a hospital for a check-up. With the help of the app, you can ask questions and get health advice. You can get lab results, medications, and referrals.
Ping MD: This app is available for both Apple and Android phones. It is a platform that enables chat facility between the patients and doctors. It makes consultation easy and fast. The other features are:
Doctors can discuss medical issues with their patients and colleagues
Eliminates the risk of disclosing private messages to the public
The discussion between the patient and doctor is transferrable to the patient’s medical record
For e-visitations and e-consultations, doctors can bill their patients
Hello MD: In this app, doctors can set their consultation fees. It does not provide immediate healthcare; it finds specialists for appointment booking. Patients with very special health conditions can find specialists like neurologists and radiologists. Once a specialist is located, an appointment is set up within 24 hours. The consultation takes place through video call. Before consultation, doctors fix their fees and patients pay it via credit card. The app is web-based and accessible through mobile devices.
Live Health Online: This app is available for both Android and Apple mobile device users and is available only in a few states. The consultation is through video call. Doctors write prescriptions after the consultation and patients make their payment using their insurance plan. If their policy does not cover online visits, then patients pay the consultation fee.
Medscape: It is the number one medical platform for clinicians in the U.S. Healthcare professionals can access tons of medical information from the app. It is very helpful for them because it gives access to educational tools that they need. Other features include:
Helps caregivers look up medications and dosages
Drug interaction check is done to prevent any adverse combination of drugs
Helps to find important information on patients
The app includes medical calculators and image collection platforms
It is available to users of Kindle Fire
Microsoft HealthVault: It is a free health mobile app where individuals can keep their medical records. Storing personal medical records makes it easy to share them with the health professionals and family. It is safe and up-to-date in storing medical records. For people with chronic conditions, it is very helpful to trail their health metrics. You can input manual data and for automatic data input, patients connect the app to health trackers. The app is also accessible through the web.
Calculate: This app is helpful for clinical calculations. It provides medical decision support tools from experts. More than 150 medical calculators are present in this app. It has access to full PDF files on support tools. You can find the information about the latest medical research in the app.
DoctorOnDemand: This allows patients to consult doctors through video chatting. E-visitations and E-consultations are possible for this app. Doctors write prescriptions for patients depending on their condition. You can also book appointments with pediatricians, consultants, and psychologists.
The use of healthcare apps has increased tremendously. Digitizing your healthcare business has become very important in this digital era. Digitization plays a vital role in improving the health and wellness of people through innovations such as healthcare apps, and more people and physicians starting to use them. Healthcare mobile app development companies develop useful apps that help to deliver good care to patients at home, reduce other expenses, save time, avoid the discomfort of going to the hospital, and a lot more benefits. Reliable healthcare apps make things easier and more efficient for both healthcare professionals and patients.
With COVID-19 spreading throughout the country with only a few signs of hope, our daily lives are under tremendous uncertainty and stress. The pandemic has forced many to shut down their businesses – be it big or small- and many have also paused their SEO activities. Pausing your organic SEO or digital marketing campaign may seem to make sense, but remember, this current crisis will end and if you drop your SEO campaign all of a sudden it might pose a problem for your business. Your competitors may continue the SEO without you, you may fall behind and find it quite challenging to acquire clients when the industry is back on its feet. For instance, many plastic surgery practices had to shut down their practice or completely revamp their processes to sideline cosmetic procedures and focus solely on emergency ones. In such cases, many practices chose to hold back their medical SEO though temporarily. However, medical practices that continue with their marketing efforts may have a huge advantage over those that don’t.
Whether a pandemic or some other major crisis, some things never lose their significance, which includes SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of rules for optimizing your website so that it can achieve higher rankings in search engines’ organic results. In today’s competitive market, SEO marketing is more important than ever, for all businesses. So, use SEO to effectively sustain your business in different ways.
Here are some ways that SEO could be helpful during this pandemic
Opportunity to show empathy: When a pandemic strikes, it’s the time to be an understanding friend and show empathy towards your customers through certain expressions such as we understand, we care, valued customers and so on. Show the human side of your business as it might make people happier when they know they can relate with a business and the business understands the situation. If your business is helping the community in some way during the epidemic, share that in a newsletter or find a way of including it in your content.
Audit the content on your site: If you are a medical related business, then it’s a good time for you to audit the content on your entire site. You can suggest topics and create custom pages that can help drop light on some of the current procedures and processes you are focused on during this pandemic.
Provides hope for long-term marketing: SEO done now is a seed for the future, as for many businesses, the future is uncertain. During economic downtimes, SEO is an especially smart investment in the future of your business. One of its key advantages is how cost effective it is compared to other channels, such as media. It will provide a way out after the pandemic.
Promoting your business: Even though people are quarantined in their homes, they still are searching for different things which include products or services that relate to making their life easy during the pandemic. You can modify your content so that your brand or service continues to show up in the content. Some businesses share safety messages with their audience, so even if you’re selling products that may be the last thing on anyone’s mind during a pandemic, your brand is still visible in searches. Optimize for certain keywords that may relate to safety during a pandemic.
Useful Audience Metrics: By noticing which keywords are trending or which of your site pages are reaping the most benefits from your SEO strategy, you’ll learn what your audience is searching for. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to adjust and provide other relevant content during this pandemic.
Stay relevant: As people are now spending more time online, it’s best to enhance your online presence. Pay attention to create SEO strategies for your business, as it gives you a chance to stay relevant during a lockdown and even if visitors to your site don’t make purchases, they just might when things get back to normal.
Maintain top-of-the-mind awareness: With a proper SEO strategy, your business can stay visible. Every business can use SEO to maintain top-of-the-mind awareness which will become an asset once this pandemic is over.
Provides analytical insight into demand: SEO analytics helps to predict the demand curve for your goods or services which can be vital information that can help plan for a possible slump. However, during the pandemic, people’s needs change but it’s not always drastic. Sometimes it may be according to the amount of money they still have at their disposal. A person, for example, may buy chocolates during the first and second week of a pandemic but later they may find it a luxury that they can do without. SEO analytics tools can show you how fast interest in your product or service is dropping and you can start planning your next move. (business2community.com).
Gain from searchers: Local SEO will help people (who still have the money but would rather not go out to spend it) find businesses that can provide for their needs within the area that they are in. SEO can keep commerce alive despite the hard times and if you ignore SEO, you will not find these people, and even if it’s a small revenue you might miss it.
Builds trust: Building trust with your audience in such a crisis is especially valuable and SEO hinges on that trust. Users tend to believe in Google’s ranking system. For instance, we all go for first pages of the search results, because we assume that Google’s assessment of the top few links is accurate. So, ranking your service or brand on the top page of search results gives you inherent trust in the eyes of consumers. With proper SEO, you will achieve it.
According to Search Engine Journal, “search is a proxy for consumer intent and behavior, and the COVID-19 crisis is having a dramatic impact on search behavior, consumer mobility, media consumption habits, supply chains, and budgets. With these changing circumstances, businesses need to adjust their next marketing campaigns to alleviate risk strategically”.
Here are some tips to build a strong SEO program during this COVID-19 pandemic:
Continue the path of SEO and social marketing
Stay at the forefront of Google trends
Improve your website’s security
Reduce paid search and get ready for daily management
Maximize email and ensure your clients/customers that you are here to help
Don’t exploit and market efficiently
Don’t promote Coronavirus sale or deals
Help and support your community
However, from a personal standpoint, all you can do is stay indoors and practice social distancing during this pandemic, whereas from a marketing, business, and career perspective, you can make a great change during this period. As you may have more time now, use it as your advantage and put extra effort in ways of promoting SEO for your business so that you can grow stronger soon after this economic downtime. Make updates, do your research, collect data, keep up with the trends, and develop an SEO strategy. Healthcare mobile app development is one of the major aspects of SEO marketing, and you can develop apps that touch various aspects of people’s health. It also brings your technical capability before your target audience.
Telemedicine companies have been involved in providing healthcare to people without access to conventional healthcare due to their age or geographic location. SEO services in Long Island develop strategies specifically for such companies.
Importance of Telemedicine
Telemedicine gives healthcare providers the opportunity to reach out to patients from all parts of the world. A recent study has revealed that the telemedicine space could grow astronomically till 2022 at least.
With telehealth, healthcare access can be improved for remote patients and hospitals. While remote patients can get access to clinical services easily, remote hospitals can also provide quality intensive care and emergency services. Telehealth improves outcomes for patients since they can be treated and diagnosed earlier. Telehealth-equipped ICUs bring about significantly reduced complications, hospital stays and mortality rates. With telehealth, the number of patient transfers required for emergencies such as stroke are reduced. Thanks to advanced home monitoring systems, expensive hospital visits are reduced anyway. Cost savings and more constant health monitoring are guaranteed.
The situation currently prevalent in most parts of the world is the lockdown brought about by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. There could be many people out there who might want their health doubts to be cleared or have their blood pressure, heart rate and other aspects checked. Telemedicine could give them the opportunity to take care of their health needs without leaving the comfort and safety of their homes. With effective search engine optimization, your telemedicine company could reach out to these people.
SEO Building Blocks Your Telemedicine Business Needs
As with SEO for any industry, the success of healthcare SEO revolves around effective web page and blog content quality, keyword optimization, metadata, image optimization, social media optimization, internal linking, and a user-friendly and quick-loading site. This helps you build a strong online presence while also facilitating greater conversions.
Content
One of the most important strategies telehealth companies need is inbound marketing. It’s not just attracting anyone, but the right people. For that, you need to target them with the right kind of content and through the most appropriate channels. Content should revolve around the problems and areas of interest of the target audience. That’s how you can attract them to your blogs, social networking channels, and your website.
As part of quality content, what you need to do is consider the problems patients or typical users of your telemedicine services go through and address them through your blog posts. You can post information-rich content with useful tips that help raise your credibility and enable you to perform well on the search rankings. You can include topics that have relevance to what your services deal with. You can focus on diseases, symptoms and other aspects.
You also need content that shows how apps and high-tech equipment can help improve healthcare. That would give your audience a desire to experience these technologies. They would then connect with you to learn more about such stuff.
Keyword Optimization
For keyword optimization, you need to focus on long-tail keywords and question-based searches such as “how to check blood pressure” or “what to do when you get fever”.
Create pages and blogs around these topics and also include relevant tags. Search engines will pick up on this content and boost your rankings. Make use of keyword suggestion tools including Google Ads.
Optimizing for long-tail keywords is particularly important. These can help you build up your page rank faster. You can optimize for the usual or typical search phrases, but they are most likely highly competitive. It’s harder to secure favorable rankings for them since there already could be established telemedicine and healthcare organizations optimizing for these keywords. Long-tail keywords are not only less competitive, meaning you have greater chances of building up your rankings, but, according to research, they are also normally searched by people who are closer to signing up for those services. That helps you increase your conversion rate.
Blogs
Blogs are among the most important types of content you need to focus on. Blogs are easy to read through, and if you make them interesting enough, you can build a following. The interest comes when you create these blog posts around topics that your target audience is looking for. You can present solutions to their problems, or provide tips or practical instructions. That adds value to your content – just what you need to build traffic. With keyword research, you can get the content optimized to perform well in the rankings.
There can hardly be more compelling content than testimonials of people who have used your telehealth technologies and benefited from them. Including them could be really significant.
Never underestimate the importance of internal linking. Internal linking is as important as acquiring backlinks. Any new content you create for your site must be linked to other related blog posts and pages. When you do that, readers can easily find other relevant content in your website, which helps raise the traffic to all those pages. Not only does this help SEO, but also raises your chances of conversions since readers have a lot more to learn about what you offer.
Image Optimization
Make sure you have optimized the images on your website. Add titles containing relevant keywords and descriptive phrases for search engines to track.
Metadata is an important aspect of your on-page optimization. The meta title, description and tags of your pages need to be effectively optimized to tell search engines what your web pages are about. Make the title less than 60 characters and the description less than 160 characters. Your description should ideally answer the kind of things your target audience would ask in the search engines.
Social Media Optimization
An active presence on the major social networks is essential for any business. But what you need to focus on are social networks your target audience frequents. Through interesting and informative posts including videos, quotes and images, and commenting on other relevant posts, you can make your business really conspicuous.
Mobile Visibility
In this era of apps, you need a website that loads well on mobile devices. People prefer searching on the mobile rather than their laptops, which is why your website needs to be visible in mobile search. You can adopt a responsive design that will ensure your website performs well on all devices. Google values mobile performance. Developing apps can be a great way to offer value to your audience. Healthcare mobile app development is one of the major aspects of digital marketing, and you can develop apps that touch various aspects of people’s health. It also confirms your technical capability before your target audience.
A Long Island SEO company can help your telemedicine business stand strong in the midst of competition and be conspicuous to patients who really need the kind of care your services offer.
